Lawyer fined for leaking classified info to then lover
A lawyer who leaked confidential client information to his then lover admitted to professional misconduct before a disciplinary tribunal, which has called for him to be fined.
Mr Ryan Lin, an associate director at Morgan Lewis Stamford LLC then, had spoken to the woman via WhatsApp from October 2015 over two months.
The Disciplinary Tribunal (DT), comprising Senior Counsel Roderick Martin and lawyer Tan Gee Tuan, in its reportrecommended that Mr Lin pay a penalty of between $15,000 and $20,000 for all the charges. The amount is to be decided by the Law Society's governing council.
According to the DT report, the pair entered into an intimate relationship after they met through Tinder, a dating app, in October 2015.
She complained to the Law Society in February last year about his disclosures after the tryst ended.
Months later, Mr Lin's employer Morgan Lewis Stamford followed suit.
The Law Society pressed charges against Mr Lin, who is in his 30s.
The DT said Mr Lin was fortunate there was no evidence that any of the clients whose confidential information was passed had suffered loss or damage. It found that the disclosures were restricted to personal communication, which meant negligible likelihood of damage or loss, and there was no fraudulent or dishonest conduct by Mr Lin.
Among other breaches, Mr Lin sent to the woman a photograph of a draft circular to shareholders on Nov 13, 2015, in relation to the proposed disposal of sale companies to an entity. The proposed disposal by a client had not then been made public.
The disclosure of the draft circular amounted to misconduct unbefitting of a lawyer, said the tribunal. It ordered Mr Lin to pay $7,000 in costs to the Law Society.
Mr Lin is understood to be no longer with the law firm.
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